About & Contact

Civic Social Media

“What if social media were not commercially driven, but had public values at its core?”

The Civic Social Media project focuses on researching, designing, and advocating for digital platforms that enable community members to communicate, collaborate, and exchange information safely and securely. These platforms are built on public values and are transparently developed and managed by organizations and initiatives with a social purpose. 

The debate about the need for a digital public infrastructure and public value-based online spaces has gained considerable momentum in recent years. Governments and funding bodies have issued various calls and manifestos on this topic, and it is increasingly appearing on national and European policy agendas. Several initiatives have also emerged in this space, such as the Facebook alternative Mastodon, technical protocols like ActivityPub and Matrix for decentralized (federated) social networks, and the open-source initiative Decidim for participatory processes.

Civic social media are not optimized for individual users but are designed for collaboration, dialogue, and communication within collectives and communities . As such, they are navigating relatively uncharted territory. The development of civic social media and the underlying digital public infrastructure that supports it poses numerous challenging questions, which we will explore and reflect on here.

These questions range from broad issues—such as why civic social media are important and what legal and policy frameworks are needed—to more practical concerns, including how to design, code, finance, steward, and promote civic social media initiatives.

In short, with this project, we aim to accelerate the development of civic social media.

This project is financed by SIDN.